On Monday, Cal Newport and I are reopening Life of Focus for a new session. Before we do that, I’d like to take this chance to explain how Life of Focus works—since it is a little different from what most people have come to expect from online courses—and share how I think about designing courses […]

In the ideal world, credentials would be awarded to all experts, and withdrawn from all charlatans. But they don’t always line up as neatly as that. An expert is someone who can keep a promis…

It’s been a busy week for our new President, to put it mildly. The thing that’s gotten the most attention is his Executive Order putting an immediate end

The losses keep coming. The lives lost in the DCA plane crash, entire communities lost in the LA fires, careers lost from new policy shifts. Words feel

If you fail to show us the facts, it’s difficult to accept your analysis. While it’s tempting to simply share an interpretation of what’s happening, credibility and persuasion are…

Focus is hard. And in the years since I’ve started writing, it has gotten harder. Diagnoses of ADHD (including self-diagnoses) have skyrocketed. While it’s likely that some of this is due to a lessening of stigma around mental health issues revealing what was already there, anecdotally, it appears that people are having a much harder […]

Nothing stays still. Relative to the rest of the world, even something that’s not moving is changing. It’s tempting to talk about not making fast enough progress. But it’s far mor…

There are many ways to prioritize our time and focus, but the easiest and most vivid way is to do the urgent things first. If we wait until a house plant is sick before we take care of it, though, …

Consulting firms rank brands on value. Marketers promise to increase it. But brand value has little to do with whether a company is famous or even profitable. The accurate measure of brand value is…

Ideally, on Monday mornings, I've got an essay for you. (Schedule of events here at Second Breakfast: Monday’s newsletter: essay, most of it for paid subscribers; Friday’s: the week’s news, yay! the news!, for everyone.) Although the word “essay” comes from the French essayer (to try), I

“I don’t want to learn to be better,” is something we rarely admit. We don’t say: I don’t want to learn statistics, even though it will dramatically improve my decisio…

In 1977, economists noticed something strange in the Netherlands. The discovery of natural gas had made the country rich. Really rich. But the wealth was

Cybersecurity Research and More

I’ve always struggled with the idea of work-life balance. That’s not because I’m a workaholic or don’t value my leisure time. Instead, it’s because I work for myself. What counts as “work” and what counts as “leisure” is harder to separate when I make my own schedule and don’t get paid by the hour. For […]

The anniversary date of “Field Notes” varies a bit, depending on who you ask. Aaron Draplin first used the name (typeset, of course, in all-caps Futura…

Process is the investment we make in inefficiency now to prevent errors from costing us later. Jet airlines are the safest form of travel ever created, largely because of the inefficient process th…

Jason Rodriguez is a slightly jaded—but ultimately hopeful—tech worker. Working at GitHub.

Cynicism is the cheap seats. It’s the fast food of intellectual positions. Anyone can point at something and say it’s broken, corrupt, or destined to fail. The real challenge? Building something better. The cynic sees a proposal for change and immediately lists why it won’t work. They’

The cult of consulting suggests that if you simply had better advice from someone who knew more than you, your problems could be solved. Generally, the advice isn’t really the hard part. Ther…

Freedom is something we desire. The freedom to choose, to speak up, to produce, to follow our passions and our dreams. And organizations in search of efficiency, shortcuts or profits often argue fo…

The experience of the now is often more vivid than a distant memory. As a result, we can make decisions in the future without enough regard for how we felt the last time we were in a similar situat…

The second worst is the unaware sort. The work doesn’t meet spec, and we don’t even realize it. The worst is uncaring. We know the work doesn’t meet spec, but we don’t bothe…

Learning is a journey of incompetence. First, we realize that there’s something we don’t know. Then we see that we’re going to be better at it, and we’re not good at it yet.…

Back when he was still running Microsoft in the 1980s, Bill Gates would vanish into the woods for a week each year. No communication. No meetings - just

Selfish is easy. Short term is easy. Complacent is easy. Turning our head and ignoring the problem is easy. Going along to get along is easy. But easy isn’t the point. Better is. Challenging the st…

On what to do after work

Technology and the cost of convenience, explained.

In a mountain village in mid-20th-century Crete, a young shepherd creeps toward his neighbor’s flock before dawn to steal his goats. His heart races. Not because he fears capture. But because the raid represents his chance to prove he can thrive in uncertainty — to prove his manhood. A century earlier and half a world […]

Most of our activities can be seen as nested plans, to achieve nested goals.